Mumsnet jury - what do you think of my electricity bill?

[GooseyLoosey]

In the past 2 years, NPower have billed me over £6000 for electicity. I was in dispute with them over this until a year ago when it all went quiet. I thought that they had agreed they had made a mistake until a month ago when they helped themselves to around £3500 from my bank account (still pretty irate over that one).

We are a family of 4. We live in a nice house not a mansion. We do not operate any powerstations as hobbies or anything similar. We did have electic heaters over one winter as the house had no other heating at the time, but apart from that have nothing unusual. Dh and I both work so there is no one in the house for half the week.

It is my contention that at least £4500 of this is wrong (we have already agreed around £1800 is as a result of 2 separate mistakes and are arguing over the balance).

When I tell NPower that this is absurd, they tell me that electricity usuage varies from household to household. So, I appeal to the jury of mumsnet to tell me whether NPower are the incompetent *** I think they are or am I sadly deluded and it is possible that I could have used this much electicity.

A typical retail rate for electricity, GL, is 8-10 per kWh so NPower are saying you have used around 30000 kWh per year for the past two years.

Average domestic electricity consumption in this country is just over 4,600 kWh. So to answer your original question - no you are not deluded!

But I think you knew that anyway

Should say I live in a 4 bed house. They were proposing to put my monethly dd up to £270 until I explained in no uncertain terms to them that I was not going to pay for their incomptence on a monthly basis until they resolved it!

Any more thoughts on how unreasonable this is?

I plan to go back to them and tell them I have canvassed opions and the almost universal view is that they are morons.

OOh Gizmo, do you have a source for your stats?

Trouble is Custardo that this is so common the energy retailers are kinda thick skinned about it. Energy watch does its best but has few teeth, the press have covered these stories a few times but it because it's industry standard it doesn't do any one company's reputation significant harm, and if you go to senior management in these organisations they will openly admit that some of their IT and meter reading systems are so f*cked that mistakes like these are inevitable.

All of which is not much help to you, GL. I think the only course of action which might get a small rocket up their arses would be to write the story up as a press release find someone senior enough to sign off on a decision up to £5000 and email or call him with the release, asking him why you should not send it to all the journalists you can think of, Energywatch, your MP and every switching website there is.

You might find you have a chance of some faster reparation that way. But these bloody organisations are just monumentally slow.....

Sure.

It's in the DTI's 2006 study called Energy: It's Impact on the Environment and Society (2006) There's similar stuff on the Ofgem site, but it's not the easiest to find.

(custardo, a close relative of Reckless Abandon.
I wouldn't trust either of 'em)

We recently had a bill for ovr £6k which they said was an error andn then sent us a bill for £1,400 instead. Seems too much to me for 6 months electric and gas and they said they are investigating it. Got a reminder bill the other day so looks like they aren't . Checked the bill again and they've charged us twice for the same electric period and also charged us vat on almost £5k for some reason so the mistakes keep on coming. More annoying phone calls to make now.

Goosey Loosey - My God it gets worse - makes you wonder where they are getting their numbers from if you don't even have the meter they are billing you for.

In the programme I saw the meters were looked at by an independent assessor which had nothing to do with the power company which would have been a better bet. But as nobody seems to know where they are that isn't much help.

No - it is not unreasonable to refuse to pay the DD. We don't pay out power bills by DD for that reason - we want to know it is right before they get their hands on our money - too many duff estimates although nothing in your league. Pay by cheque if you have to (to avoid getting cut off) but don't give them access to your bank account - they aren't to be trusted!!!!!!!!!

from moneysupermarket.com

If you don?t know your annual spend or early consumption

If you don?t know your consumption or annual spend you can use this option to choose low, medium or high user

Factors that influence your average yearly consumption can vary from the location of your property, the type and size of property you live in and the number of people who live there.

Usage brackets (High/Medium/Low) are defined as follows:

High: Annual Gas usage of 28,000 Kwh (approximately £730*)
Annual Electricity usage of 4,950 Kwh (approximately £730*)
Medium: Annual Gas usage of 20,500 Kwh (approximately £530*)
Annual Electricity usage of 3,300 Kwh (approximately £530*)
Low: Annual Gas usage of 10,000 Kwh (approximately £320*)
Annual Electricity usage of 1,650 Kwh (approximately £320*)

• The monetary values represented here are approximate. The real monetary amounts will be calculated by referencing the Kwh figure published above to your current tariff and will be displayed at the top of the results table when you select a usage bracket.

I would switch supplier then go into battle with them we have 4 bedroom house with t.vs washing machine constantly playtations etc our bill is approx £75 a month we do have gas CH and water though

Thanks Gizmo and Chasingsquirrels, stats really useful.

All of the outstanding monies relate to a meter which I no longer have (consumption based on current meter is around £70pm) so is proving very difficult to get anywhere with this!

Might try writing an article and sending them a draft and see if that helps.

Anyone else every had a bill this size (I am pretending that Tutter does not exist - sorry, Tutter)?

As many negative responses as possible would help me greatly as they claim that this is not beyond the realms of normal domestic possibility.

Is there any reason that they could claim why your consumption would have changed since you got the current meter? SUrely that should be sifficient proof that something was wrong with the old meter.

Have yuo exhausted the formal complaints procedure? can you then get EnergyWatch to take it up fomrally?

You could get the £3500 back in accordance with the banking direct debit rules if you did not authorise them to take it. Electric heaters cost an absolute fortune to run so I don't think you could compare your consumtion with a gas heated house.
Have you paid them anything over the past two years - aside from the £3.5k?

Is this electric heaters plus no energy saving lightbulbs, everything on standby in all rooms etc? Halogen uplighters/skirting board lights etc bla bla
Electric heating does cost a MINT.
And my mum counted over 200 light bulbs in one of her friends houses...5 bed.

I live in a 5 bed house and there is 10 of us with electic heaters and our D-Debit is £120 per month. We have single glazing and a tumble dryer that is on at least twice a day even through the summer.

IMO-the bill is definately wrong!

IDBIF, is the DD covering the bill though? Ring and ask, many people have been stung by MASSIVE bills with no warning with dd payments.

I think the bill has to be wrong - we have a large 5 bed detached in a windy chilly area - the two attic rooms have electric heaters, and although supposed to be on timers their occupants (my oldest 2 ds) often pull the timers off and leave them on, I do minimum 2 loads day, sometimes up to 4 of washing (sports mad household all sports muddy and dirty), cook on electric (twice a night {sigh} as DH in too late for my littlies) 1 desk top and 2 laptops (admittedly we have quite a few energy saving bulbs and i run round switching lights off) but our bill is £95/month

I live in a two bed cluster home, although I have two kids and wash probably once a day (clothes not my body!) I cant see how we use much electricity. We have been billed 800, yes 800 pounds for the last quarter!! I am in the process of reading my meter and will be calling up again tomorrow to dispute this. Thing is I'm moving house mon/tues so I don't know if they will be able to get to the meter in time.......

yes it is thank-goodness. they keep checking on it and write a letter and put it up when necessary, we started off at £89. and it has slowly crept up over 4 years to £120. Just before it went up to £120 we were just about in credit so thats why they put it up again to make sure we don't go behind.

hi npower took one year to send me an ammended bill, to actually take notice of the readings i was giving them.

I must have spoken to about 10 different people and rang about every 2 months with meter updates.

This was a case whereby they just din't seem to want my cash.

Their customer servoce is appaling.

Thanks all for your responses - was away for a few days.

Just to let you know where I have ended up, I have persuaded them that it was not legal to take £3500 from my account without prior notice so they have agreed to refund the money to me pending an investigation (of course, I'll believe it when I see it). They have also suspended my direct debit so will not be taking any more money from me until its all sorted.

Thanks again!

Goosey - were you notified of the £3500 in advance of the direct debit?

If not you don't have to wait for them to refund it you can ask your bank to claim it bank under the Direct Debit Guarantee Scheme. The bank should refund you immediately.

Sorry typo - claim it back.

goosey,

go to your cupboard and look at your electricity meter. It will have a very long number on it which is called an MPAN. Write it down.

also note the reading and write today's date with it.

Call up NPower and ask them what MPAN is currently registered at your address. AND Compare it to the MPAN number which should be at the top of your bill (somewhere near the acct. no.) It should match the one which is in your house. It is a unique number and no other house in the UK should have this number.

Also ask them what is the previous MPAN for the meter which they removed 2 yrs ago and look at the old bills if you still have them to make sure they all match up.

You also want to find out what exact readings and the dates when the readings were taken. (these can be either customer readings or meterman readings, it doesn't really matter) Do this for the current and previous meters.

If you get this info. I am willing to help you with the next step.